


Needing You Needing Me

by Eileniessa



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [9]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Battle of Sodden Hill, Vulnerable! Tissaia, poison/venom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:01:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26256820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eileniessa/pseuds/Eileniessa
Summary: For the second time in as many days, Yennefer finds Tissaia in need of her help.
Relationships: Tissaia de Vries/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1894447
Comments: 2
Kudos: 49





	Needing You Needing Me

**Author's Note:**

> Re-uploaded from ‘Bloody Entertainment’.
> 
> Disclaimer: This is a work of fan fiction using characters from the books by Andrzej Sapkowski, the game series by CD Projekt Red and the TV series by Netflix. I do not claim ownership to any of these characters and have written this fan fiction for entertainment, not financial gain.
> 
> Warnings: Spoilers for The Witcher Netflix series 1, episode 5, 7 and 8.

The first thing that Yennefer noticed when she woke up, was that she was freezing.

She drew her arms across her chest and pulled her knees towards her chin. When she opened her eyes, she was sure that she would be able to see her breath, but she didn’t. The air was warm against her face and a blanket of smoke and embers covered her body and the ground as far as she could see.

The second thing she noticed, was the body lying underneath her.

Yennefer’s head was resting on someone’s chest and there was an arm draped over her shoulders and waist. Their body was covered by a thick, dark purple material speckled with grey that made Yennefer’s cheeks itch. She felt their breath against the top of her head and their weak but steady presence gently touching hers.

“Tiss-“ The word got caught in her throat and made her wince. Yennefer swallowed painfully and tried again. “Tissaia?”

The other woman did not respond.

Yennefer lifted her head and saw that there was a steady trickle of blood running from Tissaia’s nose and from the corner of her mouth. Her eyes were closed, and she looked deathly pale, and except for the slight rise and fall of her chest, she was lying perfectly still.

Her hand shaking from the cold she felt deep in her bones, Yennefer reached up and touched Tissaia’s face, gently tapping her cheek, and felt her fingers tingle and her hand go numb. When she withdrew her touch, letting her hand drift to Tissaia’s forearm, the sensation passed. Yennefer closed her eyes and clutched at the other woman’s limp body, and let her presence spread outwards.

She pressed herself against Tissaia’s magic and opened herself to her, but Tissaia’s presence was weak and unstable, and it did not answer her calls. Instead, as Yennefer urged her magic further into Tissaia’s thoughts and body, she felt a sort of static shot burst across and inside her head and heard Tissaia moan and inhale sharply beneath her. Yennefer pulled her presence away from Tissaia’s.

Her body had reacted to Yennefer’s magic, and Yennefer had reacted to hers. No. Yennefer had reacted to something inside Tissaia, and the feeling was familiar, but she wasn’t sure why. She raised her hand to Tissaia’s face and brushed her thumb over her cheekbone. Again, her fingers tingled, and her hand went numb. Yennefer gasped. Dimeritium.

Hands slipped from Yennefer’s waist and shoulders as she sat up and pulled back Tissaia’s sleeves. She could not see any dimeritium bands around her wrists, or bound to her neck or ankles. _Where was it?_ she thought. Yennefer was certain now that the sensation she had felt was her magic being nullified, but she could not see any dimeritium. So why had she felt it when she had touched Tissaia? That was when she realized the only other place it could be. Inside her.

Yennefer settled her head back on Tissaia’s chest and pressed herself against the other woman, wrapping her arms around her waist. She felt Tissaia’s shallow breaths under her forearm as her chest rose and fell steadily. Yennefer tried to breathe with her, but kept falling out of sync as her mind drifted to dark waters.

She wasn’t sure what to do. Though she didn’t know exactly what effect ingested dimeritium would have on a mage, it didn’t take an educated guess to know that it would be bad. Tissaia needed urgent medical attention, but with the dimeritium in her system Yennefer didn’t feel comfortable moving her with a portal, and she was too weak to carry her. There was nothing she could do but wait and hope that their allies from Sodden or the northern kingdoms would recover them, or that Tissaia would regain consciousness and tell her what she needed to do; she always had a plan.

With Tissaia’s warm body held tightly in her arms, Yennefer stopped shivering, and despite the uneven ground on which the lay, she was rather comfortable. If she closed her eyes, Yennefer knew she would fall asleep, and though her body wanted nothing more than to rest, she wanted to keep an eye on Tissaia in case her condition got worse. To stop herself from giving in to the demands of her body, Yennefer picked up a sharp stone and held it in the palm of her hand so a few of its sharp edges dug into her skin while her eyes traced the patterns of the stars at the edge of the world she knew.

After what felt like an hour, Yennefer rubbed her eyes and bit down on her bottom lip to stifle a yawn that she felt brewing in the back of her throat. As she swallowed the sound, Yennefer thought she heard loose stones shifting down the rockface where they lay. She felt the stone in her hand pierce the skin of her palm as she clutched it tightly and listened, slightly raising her head so that her ears were not pressed against the thick fabric of Tissaia’s dress.

She heard the noise again, and it was closer this time. Being careful not to touch Tissaia’s exposed skin, Yennefer channelled magic to the tips of her fingers and looked towards where she guessed the noise was coming from.

The sound kept getting louder and eventually Yennefer heard heavy footsteps amongst the clatter of falling stones. As she waited to see who would emerge over the edge of the ridge, Yennefer realized how tightly she was hugging Tissaia’s body and eased her grip. But she did not let go, not until she saw the tip of a winged helmet appear over the edge of the ridge.

Palms facing downwards, Yennefer slammed her hands into the ground and opened a portal beneath her. She felt her stomach lurch and wrapped her arms back around Tissaia’s waist as they fell. Yennefer cursed as she landed on her left side and took much of her weight and Tissaia’s weight in her shoulder. She pulled her arm out from underneath Tissaia and rolled onto her back in time to see the portal above them close.

Glancing sideways, Yennefer reached out for Tissaia’s hand and pressed her fingers against her wrist. After she found her pulse, weak by steady, she let out a huge breath she didn’t know she had been holding. Yennefer looked at Tissaia’s face, then at the place she had taken them to, and realized where they were; Rinde.

It was the last place they had seen each other before Vilgefortz found her in Nilfgaard and brought her to Aretuza. She hadn’t meant to come here, to the ruins of the Mayor’s house where the Rectoress had visited her hours before her encounter with the witcher and the djin. When she had opened the portal, her only thought had been to get herself and Tissaia as far away from Sodden as possible. Yet something about that moment of panic had landed them back here.

Yennefer was sure that it probably meant something, but she was too tired to think about it. Instead, she closed her eyes and breathed with Tissaia until she fell asleep.

* * *

It was still dark outside when she woke up. Yennefer sighed and opened then closed her eyes, shifting her hips slightly further back. Briefly, she wondered what had woken her up. She usually slept rather soundly through the night and would only stir because of the rising sun. But whatever it might have been, she was sure that it wasn’t important. It was probably just an owl or some drunkard staggering around outside her window, which she must have left open because it felt rather draughty. 

She was considering whether she could be bothered to get up and close it when she heard a sound that seemed to cut through the fog encircling her memory and pull her thoughts back to reality. Tissaia, who had rolled onto her side so that her back was facing Yennefer, was coughing violently and gasping for air.

“Shit!”

Waving her hand to light the fireplace that she remembered was nearby, Yennefer sat up and scrambled to her feet, stepping around Tissaia and kneeling in front of her.

She was curled up in a ball, eyes tightly closed as her body trembled. Strands of hair that had slipped from her bun were stuck to the side of her sweaty face and when Yennefer brushed them away, she felt the heat radiating from Tissaia’s skin. She had a fever.

One of her hands was clutching her side as her stomach muscles strained from all the coughing, and the other was covering her mouth. By the sound of it, her coughs chesty, Tissaia was hacking up her lungs, and Yennefer questioned whether she had inhaled the dimeritium that was poisoning her body. She knew that it had a powdered form and because she could not see any visible wound on Tissaia’s body it seemed implausible that she might have been poisoned by a dimeritium weapon.

To check her theory, Yennefer wrestled Tissaia’s hand away from her mouth and looked at it. Her fingers were coated in a mix of unusually dark blood and mucus that appeared to sparkle slightly in the light as though freckled with specks of silver.

The dimeritium had damaged her lungs and her body was trying to get rid of it. That explained the fever too. Tissaia’s body was trying to stimulate her immune system to fight the infection. But at this rate, it might just kill her.

While she waited for Tissaia’s coughing fit to pass, Yennefer stroked her hair and pressed her palm against the back of Tissaia’s hand which was grasping at the dress around her hip. Shortly after her coughing subsided and Tissaia caught her breath, she fell asleep holding Yennefer’s hand.

Carefully pulling herself free from the other woman’s grasp, Yennefer got to her feet and searched the ruins of the mayor’s house for a glass and a pitcher. She found them beneath the broken pieces of a table covered in a few decades worth of dust and cleaned them. Then she sat down on a sofa that had been chewed and scratched by all manners of beast and, clenching her teeth, filled the pitcher and held it tightly in her hands as her stomach churned and the dimly lit room swayed.

After her light-headedness and nausea passed, Yennefer sat down next to Tissaia. Unsheathing the dagger that she kept strapped to the bottom of her leg Yennefer cut off part of Tissaia’s dress (it was cleaner than hers and a more suitable fabric) and poured water on it. She cleaned Tissaia’s hand and one side of her face, wringing out the cloth in a curved piece of broken pottery then rolled her onto her other side.

Tissaia whimpered in her sleep and brought her knees slightly closer to her chest, but she didn’t wake up. Yennefer cleaned the other side of her face and then draped the damp cloth partly over her forehead. She didn’t want to leave Tissaia on her back in case she choked on the blood and mucus that she was coughing up.

Yennefer checked Tissaia’s temperature and decided that she would be too warm sleeping in her dress. She considered cutting her clothes off, but her hands were too unsteady, so she would have to wake Tissaia to undress her. Besides, she needed to drink some water after all that coughing and to help with her fever.

“Tissaia, you need to wake up,” Yennefer said as she shook the other woman by the shoulder.

With her eyes still closed, Tissaia jerked her shoulder and grumbled. “Go away.”

“No. You need to drink something.”

“I’m fine.”

“Really? Because you look like shit. Sit up, or I will haul you up myself.”

Tissaia adjusted her position of the floor, rotating her shoulders so that more of her back was facing Yennefer who could barely see her face now.

Yennefer waited for a count of ten and then put the pitcher down with enough force to make sure that the sound rang in Tissaia’s ears.

“Have it your way,” she said.

Ignoring Tissaia’s mumbled protests and curses, Yennefer rolled her onto her back and picked her up under the arms and moved her into a sitting position. She had never heard the Rectoress swear before and had the circumstanced been different, Yennefer thought that she might have found it rather amusing.

She rested Tissaia’s back against her chest and kept an arm around her waist as she reached for the water. Tissaia tried to pull her off but quickly gave up and conceded to leaning her weight against Yennefer as she tried to catch her breath, exhausted from her slight struggle.

Yennefer lifted to goblet to her face. “Drink this.”

She let Tissaia take the water from her and held the damp cloth to her forehead while she drank. After checking that it was empty, Yennefer set the goblet down on the floor and felt Tissaia shift under her arm as she moved to rest her head on Yennefer’s shoulder.

Despite the gravity of the situation, Yennefer smiled. While there was something deeply unsettling about seeing her great mentor in such a vulnerable and exposed state, it was also endearing in a way. Right now, Tissaia wasn’t a sorceress or the Rectoress of Aretuza. She didn’t care about the impression she was giving or the emotions that she was revealing.

It was nice to see Tissaia as herself, though Yennefer supposed that she would never know for certain how much of this was the poison, and how much was just Tissaia acting without any of her usual restraint. Still, she wanted to imagine that it was more of the latter than the former. It helped make Tissaia seem just a little bit more like her, and Yennefer liked that.

“You can’t go to sleep just yet, Tissaia,” said Yennefer as she wiped a bead of water from the other woman’s face, “you need to undress. You’re burning up.”

Though she wasn’t much help, Tissaia didn’t protest as Yennefer helped her out of her dress, leaving her in her undergarments and a long silk vest that reached down to her waist. Yennefer threw Tissaia’s clothes onto the sofa before taking her dress off. She didn’t need to, but she felt that it would make Tissaia more comfortable in the morning if she wasn’t the only one exposed.

Still sitting on the floor behind Tissaia, Yennefer looked around the room for something that they could use as bedding. On the far side of the room, she spotted a curtain hanging on a collapsed railing and a large rug buried under a ruined stool beside it. There were also a few salvageable pillows on the sofa she had sat on earlier.

Intending to retrieve the items, Yennefer got to her feet, but Tissaia grabbed her wrist before she could walk away and looked up at her with wide eyes.

“Don’t go,” she said.

Yennefer smiled and crouched down, squeezing Tissaia’s shoulders. “I’m not going anywhere. I just need to get a few things on the other side of the room. I won’t move out of sight, I promise.”

“Okay.”

Bare feet leaving marks in the dust, Yennefer quickly pulled down the curtain and dragged the rug out from the rubble and placed it beside Tissaia. Then, she collected a few of the sofa cushions, put them down on the rug, and gestured for Tissaia to come over.

She helped her lie down and get comfortable before fetching the pitcher and refilling it in case Tissaia woke up during the night and wanted something to drink. Tissaia watched her from behind droopy eyelids as Yennefer checked her temperature. It was still high, but not quite as bad as before; it was a promising start.

Satisfied that there was nothing else she could do, Yennefer settled down on the mattress and threw the old curtain over them. It itched a little, but it was better than nothing.

Lying on her back, Yennefer looked over her shoulder at Tissaia to wish her goodnight, but by the looks of things, she was already fast asleep.

Yennefer chuckled and leant over, kissing Tissaia’s temple. “Goodnight,” she said.

The light in the fireplace, a remnant of her chaos, dimmed as Yennefer settled down beside Tissaia and closed her eyes. Unlike she usually did, and despite all the cracks in the wall and the curtain-less windows, Yennefer did not wake up when the sun began to rise. Instead, she and Tissaia slept well until midday and did not leave Rinde for a few days. They knew that the others would be looking for them, but they couldn’t think of a good reason to leave just yet.

**Author's Note:**

> Bad-Things-Happen-Bingo Prompt for Anonymous on Tumblr: Tissaia and Yennefer - Poison/Venom, The Witcher Netflix.
> 
> If you have enjoyed this piece of work, please consider leaving a comment.


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